In seven to eight days, new regulations addressing the rapidly expanding misuse of deepfake technology will be announced. The government is currently working to clearly define criminal liability for these types of acts.

While speaking to a national daily, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the Minister of State for Information Technology, said that the soon-to-be-notified amended information technology regulations would treat the sale of deepfake content on social media platforms as if it were forgeries under the law.

According to Chandrasekhar, victims and anyone who knows that content is deepfake can file criminal charges. The government will also not hold back from blocking social media sites that break the law.

“New rules will explicitly state criminal liability for deepfakes. The advisory issued earlier to social media intermediaries in respect of their responsibility to prevent, detect and take down deepfakes, spoke of criminal adjudication in cases of violations. But amended rules will make it clear. Victims of deepfakes can file cases of forgery under Section 469, IPC (now replaced with Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023). Anyone else who knows the content to be deepfake will also be able to file a case,” Chandrasekhar said. Under the BNS, 2023, Section 469 stands replaced with Section 334 (4).

“We have had two rounds of digital India dialogues with the intermediaries and drawn their attention to the consequences of non-compliance with current rules. We have issued an advisory and said if we are not satisfied with compliance, we will notify new rules which are more specific to the issue of misinformation and disinformation. We are now going to issue new amended IT rules in the next seven to eight days,” Chandrasekhar said.